On Ron, Charlie, SoA

Like I said re: Game of Thrones, there’s less than a page of Sons of Anarchy panel photos from Comic-Con. And maybe 2 full body shots of Charlie Hunnam. As opposed of course to Twilight which takes up at least 30 pages between all its castmembers including, like, Ashley Greene and Nikki Reed. Nikki Reed has more solo shots available than the entire SoA panel. Awesome.

Passed by Charlie in the middle hallway between press and ballrooms. It was super brief. Like, a glimpse. As usual... hot. As usual...way hotter in person than in photos. Way hotter on the show than in photos. You really don’t get it if you don’t watch the show. Which, yes, has a very healthy viewership and gets big ratings for FX but, um, I’m not sure if I totally feel it for Comic-Con.

The super fans, sure, of course they show up and they get all horny and whatever – that’s not exactly the most objective perspective. I’m a fan, I watch, I care, and still...the way they are, these cast members, the creator, it just lacks a certain Comic-Con corny enthusiasm and spirit that I think is kinda mandatory at these events. And that’s the tone of Sons of Anarchy anyway, you know what I mean? Like there’s Ron Perlman, cool as f-ck, and I’m wondering – what is happening, and why is he here? What the f-ck is SAMCRO doing among the nerd herd? It just seems... incongruous. Maybe it’s just me.

Also Kurt Sutter, the show runner, is a dick. A whiny dick. You heard about what he did after SoA was shut out of Emmy nominations? Click here if you missed it.

Do I think they were robbed? Sure. Is that the point of this discussion? No.

He went on Twitter and bitched about it, and then bashed other actors and other shows. And THEN knew he crossed the line so he tried to love up next to Glee.

There’s a difference between being upset that SoA was overlooked and CONDONING his classless reaction afterwards. And, you know what, if the process itself was the reward, technically he shouldn’t have been paying attention to those awards anyway. After all, Sutter always contends that his show is the Edge. Why then is the Edge complaining that the Mainstream Old Academy won’t invite him to the boring dance? Make up your f-cking mind.

Let’s go back to Ron Perlman. I interviewed him for Drive. What was awesome about that is that Drive and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark are both FilmDistrict pictures. So all of it was happening at the same time and Ron and Guillermo del Toro were there together. Amazing, right? They were crushing on each other pretty hard. It was cute. And yet another example of how the real Ron is so not the Ron that shows up in the movies and on TV. His face and his soul are complete opposites.

And yes he was wearing an awesome shirt. And yes he was chill and articulate. And yes I totally imagined that we could be best friends because, well, at one point the two of us burst into a giggle fit and, however brief, it becomes a pretty authentic connection even in an artificial situation. Like a press line.

Look, I don’t want to disparage anyone, and certainly not someone who was just doing her job, but the outlet standing beside us, they sent a stringer to handle their interviews and she didn’t know a whole lot about much. So all her questions were pretty general:

How did you feel about working on this film?

You get the idea.

Needless to say, she was no Ron Perlman expert. Not sure if she’d ever actually seen him before. I felt bad for her when she said he must get recognised all the time at Comic-Con and and he was like – well, um, not really, not when I’m not in makeup, and she was like, oh but you’re so famous for your face, and he knew she was floundering and he kinda sassed her, very, very gently: “It’s bitter and it’s sweet, isn’t it?”

And he turned his head and looked right at me, with a raised eyebrow, like “what is this broad all about???” and at that, I’m sorry, I lost my sh-t and started laughing, uncontrollably, which made us like co-conspirators, and he spent the rest of his interview with her trying to make me crack up again. So by the time he was ready for me, he approached with:

“Well this is gonna go well...”

And well, you can imagine that for the first part of our discussion we just behaved like 10 year old fools. Later on, it did get serious as he discussed how much love he has for Drive and Guillermo and at the very end I asked him straight up if Jax would find out this season whether or not Gemma and Clay killed his father, and if that storyline would finally play out and he confirmed that indeed it will dominate the next two seasons, it won’t be something that they string along and make you wait forever for, like gestating until they need a ratings boost. Then I told him I was happy they were coming back to Charming because, well, I think we can all agree that Ireland was totally shark jumpy and he said that Charming is all f-cked up now with the new mayor and it’s become a goddamn mess in their absence – when isn’t Charming a goddamn mess? – and that’s the new enemy so they can’t go anywhere this time. He would have been happy to talk to me for the next half hour about SoA but the studio publicist started glaring at me so I had to wrap up.

Again, in my mind though, we’re totally bffs.

On a related but unrelated note, Guillermo told me that he’s shooting Pacific Rim in Toronto and that Charlie will be with him there, so 1. it’s another connection between Ron and Guillermo and 2. I might need to move back to Toronto.